Cabbie In Midtown Crash Speaks Outside His Victim’s Hospital

A taxi cab jumped the curb at 48th Street and 6th Avenue in New York on Tuesday. CREDIT: Kate Lord/The Wall Street Journal

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English tourist Sian Green.

The cab driver who veered onto a Midtown sidewalk and severed a young woman’s lower leg held a press conference Friday outside her hospital, blaming the accident on a cyclist who was also hit in the crash.

Mohammed Himon appeared outside Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan to insist that the Tuesday morning crash was the fault of a bike messenger who banged on his cab, prompting him to try to flee, said Fernando Mateo, a spokesman for the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, of which Mr. Himon is a member.

Mr. Himon’s cab accelerated at the corner of W. 49th Street and Sixth Avenue, jumping up onto the curb and striking 23-year-old Sian Green, a tourist from England who had to have her left leg amputated below the knee, according to police and witnesses.

Mr. Mateo defended Mr. Himon, and said that media reports quoting Mr. Himon admitting to being a poor driver were the result of misunderstandings because the cabbie speaks poor English. Mr. Mateo called on the City Council to pass new regulations against recreational and commercial cyclists as a result of the crash, including license plates for bikes and a requirement that cyclists carry insurance.

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Driver Mohammed Himon after the accident.

“If you’re on sidewalk and someone attacks you and you run out of way and a bus runs you over whose fault is that, the bus driver?” Mr. Mateo said.

Advocates for bicycle and pedestrian safety, meanwhile, have seized on the incident as proof that more must be done to protect walkers and bikers alike from reckless or aggressive drivers.

“It’s going to be very difficult for him to demonstrate any reasonable fear on his part that could possibly have justified what he did,” said Steve Vaccaro, an attorney who represents cyclists and pedestrians injured in traffic crashes.

He dismissed Mr. Mateo’s call for stricter regulations on bikes.

“The reason we have a mandatory licensure and insurance system for motor vehicles is because they are so deadly,” Mr. Vaccaro said. “If you look at the harm caused by cyclists, I’m not saying it’s zero, but it is so vanishingly small compared to that caused by motor vehicles that no one making an objective policy decision would say, ‘We need to take what we do for cars and apply it to bikes.’ It makes absolutely no sense.”

Meanwhile, the Taxi and Limousine Commission said Mr. Himon had surrendered his taxi license and would begin serving a 30-day suspension based on a pattern of moving violations occurring before Tuesday’s crash. According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, Mr. Himon has 9 points on his driving record, including three separate moving violations in 2011.

TLC regulations allow the agency to suspend a driver’s taxi license after he or she accumulates 6 points with the DMV, but the agency can allow drivers to settle for a fine if they have fewer than 10 points. A settlement was not offered to Mr. Himon, a TLC spokesman said.

A law-enforcement official identified the cyclist involved in the crash as Kenneth Olivo. He could not immediately be reached for comment. At an address listed for Mr. Olivo, a resident said he did not live there.

Mr. Olivo told police he was riding up Sixth Avenue when Mr. Himon, trying to turn left onto W. 49th Street, turned into his path, the law-enforcement official said. Mr. Olivo said he tapped the cab to tell Mr. Himon to stop, and that’s when the driver accelerated, knocking Mr. Olivo onto the hood and running up onto the sidewalk, where Ms. Green was walking with a friend.

“An accident is an accident,” Mr. Mateo said. “I don’t think that this guy or anyone that’s driving a cab would purposefully accelerate and go up on the sidewalk and kill people.”

Mr. Mateo said his organization was trying to raise funds for Ms. Green’s recovery, and that he had as much as $3,000. Neither Mr. Himon nor Mr. Mateo spoke to Ms. Green or her family during their visit to Bellevue Friday, Mr. Mateo said.

“We want to let the dust settle a little bit and come tomorrow or the weekend, we will make an attempt to see if we can contact the family,” he said. “There are two victims here: Miss Green and Mr. Himon.”

“It is outrageous and shocking to have Mr. Himon or his representative claim that Mr. Himon is the victim here,” Mr. Vaccaro said.